“How Would I Respond to Persecution?” is not a hypothetical question

Posted on April 23, 2019 by Pastor Foley

After hearing the story of Richard Wurmbrand or other Christians who have been tortured for Christ, we sometimes ask ourselves, “What would I do if I was in that situation? Would I be faithful?”

But that is the wrong question because we actually are in that situation.

It is the same principle as when we have a toothache. Our foot does not say, “I thank God I am not in pain.” Instead, when we have a toothache our whole body is focused on it. We can’t do anything else until we attend to the pain in our tooth. We even pace around on our feet or walk to the dentist because our one body is built to work together to alleviate the pain in any part of it.

The Bible says that we are one body in Christ. The Christians who currently suffer for the name of a Christ in more than 70 countries are one body with us. Hebrews 13:3 commands us to remember them as though in prison with them. 

So we cannot say, “What would I do?”, as if we were engaging in a merely theoretical exercise. We must instead say, “What will I do?”, because the one body of Christ of which I am a member is actually, presently suffering. The only thing that has changed since the time of Rev. Wurmbrand is that more Christians are being persecuted in more places more often.

The fact that we ourselves aren’t the part of the body of Christ which is in jail does not mean we are not experiencing persecution. It just means that we are the part of the body that God has placed is in the best position to help the rest of the body. That is why we should never pray, “Thank you, God, that I live in a land where I am free to worship as I choose.” Only part of your body is in such a land. The rest of your body is in a land where worshiping as God calls often requires time in jail, or worse. With 70 countries restricting Christianity and 1 in 3 Asians currently living in such countries, the part of your body in prison is substantial.

So what help can our part of the body provide to the part that is presently suffering?

Rev. Wurmbrand offered “howling in pain” as a good place to start. Isn’t that what we do when some part of our own body is in acute pain? It also may be a much better description of the action that we should take than “pray”. It is worth noting that the Bible does not command us to “pray” for those who are suffering for Christ but rather to remember them as though we were imprisoned with them. That calls for something more akin to a howl than a pious remembrance.

 

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Is There Such A Thing As Smuggling Too Many Bibles Into North Korea and Other Closed Countries?

Posted on April 9, 2019 by Pastor Foley

I regularly see ministries putting out ads claiming that the number one request of North Korean Christians is for Bibles, Bibles, and more Bibles. These ministries claim that for every few dollars you send, they’ll send one more Bible into North Korea; the only limit is your generosity. I’ve even seen them claim to distribute Bibles into North Korean concentration camps.

As someone who has worked with underground North Korean Christians for many years, I can tell you that while such ads have tremendous emotional and fundraising appeal, they are not rooted in reality. The amount of time, care, logistics, people, money, and prayer it takes to place even a single Bible inside North Korea is beyond most people’s imagining. It’s never cheap, and it doesn’t happen on a mass-production level. The shortage is never of Bibles available for distribution. Never.

I was reading a private letter from Rev. Wurmbrand to our sister VOM missions from 1982 today. Seems that there is nothing new under the sun. Rev. Wurmbrand wrote:

Huge quantities of Bibles are produced for European Communist countries by other missions… This has produced a catastrophe in a country like Romania. Everybody brought the Bibles basically to the same addresses. Neighbors were alarmed by the great number of vans and trailers coming to one person. These had no possibilities to be distribute such quantities. At the last arrests in Ploieshti tens of thousands of Bibles were confiscated. They were sto­red since long. I know from my own experience that to distribute 1,000 Bibles in conditions of illegality, with every second member of the underground church suspect as informer, without means of transport was already a big problem.

Rev. Wurmbrand’s point is that we should not think that the only thing stopping us from effectively distributing an unlimited amount of Bibles in closed countries is money. Distribution is mainly limited not by funding shortfalls (donors are always generous with Bible money, praise God) but by a number of factors stemming from the fact these countries are closed and specialize in making Christian work as difficult, dangerous, and deadly as possible. Rev. Wurmbrand noted that there are always fake Christians, spies, and profiteers in these countries, and we must be wise. Bible distribution in closed countries is by definition very difficult, and money for Bibles is usually the least of the difficulties.

So if not Bibles, Bibles, and more Bibles, what should we be smuggling to underground believers? Rev. Wurmbrand offered a specific recommendation in the 1982 letter:

My conviction is also that while a good number of Bibles is needed, they [people in closed countries] need a huge quantity of simple books explaining the Christian faith and books opposing Christianity to Marxism. For those who have not lived under Communism, it is difficult to realise what counter-productive effect a Bible can have, if not accompanied by right teaching, on a soul. I had not read the Bible 14 years. I read it as a new book when I came out of prison. I was appalled when I read books like Joshua, Judges, etc. where God orders the extermination of whole populations with wives and children. I said to myself ”This is worse than what Communists have done. The Communists could use this justification.’ Happily I had some spiritual preparation. For those without it, General Jaruzelski [of Poland] is better than Joshua. The Bible says, ‘How will I understand if there is nobody to explain?’ I am against simply giving 1 million Bibles. even if it would be possible, without giving another million books with explanations. This belongs to the realm of phantasy.

Rev. Wurmbrand was quick to note that this does not diminish the real need for the hard, slow, copy-by-copy distribution of the Bible inside closed countries that we and our VOM sister missions around the world specialize in. But he felt VOM’s unique contribution to the underground church around the world lay in the distribution of that peculiar form of literature which might be called “ideological evangelism”:

We have to print Bibles. We could not have couriers without this, but we should concentrate our printing on special books: Christianity versus Marxism. No other mission has such books. We have the unanimous witnesses of Christians from behind the Iron Curtain, especially from students and intellectuals, that these are the books they value most because these solve the doubts which Marxist indoctrination has sown in their mind. It must not be only my ‘Answer to Moscow’s Bible’ and ‘Marx Satanist’. Several other authors have written good books on this subject.

To say that we should concentrate on printing and distributing anything other than Bibles in China, North Korea, and other closed countries is likely to yield indignant outcries and stern rebukes (and the least amount of funds raised). But Rev. Wurmbrand never worried about the response of the general public, only the need of the underground church. And with more than 1 billion people still living under Communism today, it’s worth noting that while the Chinese government is getting ready to publish its own Chinese Communist Party edition of the Bible, it has yet to publish any of Rev. Wurmbrand’s books on Communism and Christianity. That remains VOM’s unique contribution to the work of the church globally.

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The New Wave of Christian Persecution in China is Producing a New Wave of North Korean Missionaries from the Most Unusual Backgrounds

Posted on March 27, 2019 by Pastor Foley

2018 marked a new wave of Christian persecution in China–a coordinated, country-wide offensive against the church in both its registered and unregistered forms. One battle in that larger war has been the identification and expulsion of South Korean missionaries. As a result, North Koreans, who have typically learned about Christianity from two sources–Korean missionaries and Chinese churches–have also been caught in the undertow of this persecution tsunami.

Chinese churches were once the primary “stations” on the North Korean underground railroad. It used to be whispered in North Korea that anyone escaping into China should look for a building with a cross on top. There, they were told, someone would help them. And the whisper was true. Now, however, China is tearing the crosses down from these buildings and putting their leaders in prison.

Owing to these twin developments–the expulsion of South Korean missionaries and the desecration of Chinese churches–it would seem increasingly unlikely for North Koreans in China to hear about Jesus.

It would seem that way. But we should never question whether God has a Plan B. He always does. The only question is whether what looks to us like Plan B was in fact the Plan A he intended in the first place.

OUT WITH PLAN A AND IN WITH PLAN B. OR IS IT OUT WITH PLAN B AND IN WITH PLAN A?

In this case, Plan B–which looks and sounds a lot like the kind of Plan A’s one encounters in the Bible and throughout church history–involves ordinary, untrained, and in most cases unbaptized North Koreans who wouldn’t on the face of it appear to know a whole lot of what we would consider essential knowledge of Christianity and thus would appear to us to be unlikely missionaries. However, these unlikely missionaries are increasingly turning up in the most unusual places and encountering God in some of the most unusual ways. And God seems to be using them to do some very unusual missionary work.

Movie Disciples

Much has been reported about North Koreans watching South Korean dramas inside North Korea and how these dramas inspire them to defect to South Korea or desire a more prosperous material life. But more and more we are discovering that North Koreans watching these and other videos are desiring a more spiritual life also. It is a phenomenon we’ve labeled “Movie Discipleship.”

“Movie disciples” are North Koreans who begin to believe in and pray to God because of scenes they see in secular movies and dramas that mention God or Christian themes or which show church buildings or Bibles. Often, these movies are not explicitly Christian and the religion featured in them is an afterthought to most viewers. But for North Koreans, the references to religion are becoming more and more of interest.

Even Indian “Bollywood” movies are stirring North Koreans’ hunger for God.

Indian movies and South Korean dramas sometimes show church buildings, crosses, and pictures of Jesus. A character might even say something like, “I pray to God.” Since North Koreans have never seen these things before, they begin to ask their friends about them. In this way, word begins to spread, in the form of questions.

Voice of the Martyrs Korea has been smuggling Christian materials into North Korea for years, including popular Christian movies with high production values. Even older movies like “The Ten Commandments” or “Ben Hur” are extremely popular with North Koreans. A few years ago we worked together with our sister mission, Voice of the Martyrs US, to make an animated story of the life of Jesus called “He Lived Among Us”, which placed special emphasis on the persecution he faced. Now, ordinary North Koreans  are “re-discovering” these movies, as a spiritual hunger spreads. They’re looking for something more than economic success.

Although many ministries broadcast or smuggle in audio or videos of sermons, our organization finds movies far more effective. A pastor giving a sermon can sometimes seem to North Koreans like a North Korean self-criticism meeting or a Kim Jong Un speech. When the same material is presented as a drama, we’ve found North Koreans are more receptive.

This month Voice of the Martyrs Korea also begin to smuggle into North Korea the new movie Tortured for Christ, the story of Romanian pastor and VOM founder Richard Wurmbrand, who remains faithful to God despite 14 years of torture in a Communist prison. We think ordinary North Koreans will be especially receptive to the movie’s message, since they are wrongly taught in grade school that Christian pastors made Communists suffer. But this movie shows the truth. It shows Christians suffering under Communists but still praying for them and loving them. It’s the kind of thing that is sure to get North Koreans whispering.

BOLD-SPIRIT BOSSES

For years we and our Underground University (UU) North Korean missionary students have evangelized North Korean workers sent abroad to make hard currency for the regime. Typically the biggest impediment to reaching them has been their North Korean labor bosses, who are specially trained to spot people like us.

North Korean labor bosses are different than North Korean labor workers. Their spirits are bold, their actions confident. Their hands are soft, not calloused or scarred. Their eyes are sharp. Their clothes are warm.

So recently, when we were on a missionary trip to reach laborers, we were surprised to be sitting across from just such a bold-spirited, confident, soft-handed, sharp-eyed, warm-clothed man. Our UU student missionary leaned across the table and whispered that this was not a laborer, but a boss.

“He has the power to have someone killed!” the student hissed quietly to us.

Yet, there our student sat, holding the boss’ hand and telling him about God. The only thing more surprising than the UU student’s calm demeanor was the boss’ calm response. He stated, with boldness of spirit, that he already believed in God.

“When I started to doubt whether the North Korean government was doing the right thing, I needed to cling to something bigger and better,” he explained. “I didn’t know that this being was the God of Christianity, but I trusted and believed in him all the same.”

The UU student excitedly briefed the man that the unknown God he was worshiping was actually the Triune God. It was this God, the UU student explained, that had brought us together in order to reveal himself more fully. 

AN UNWISE (AND THUS GOD-BLESSED) MISSION

“Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called,” wrote the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 1:26-30. “Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him.”

Who is nullifying whom? To us, it may seem like the Chinese government is nullifying the hard work of many South Korean missionaries and Chinese churches. But Paul says that God himself is the one who nullifies. He nullifies the things that are so that he may nullify our boasting. After eighteen years of North Korea and China ministry, I have learned not to boast about our projects and not to regard anything we do as indispensable, un-nullifiable. If God can raise up children of Abraham from stones, he can certainly raise up North Korean missionaries from Bollywood movies and labor bosses.

Not only can he do this; he already is.

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